


Dear heart, it's me

by handfuloftime



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: (well mostly fluff), F/M, Fluff, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:13:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29386095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handfuloftime/pseuds/handfuloftime
Summary: Anne Coulman's fiancé comes home, at last.
Relationships: Ann Coulman Ross/James Clark Ross
Comments: 6
Kudos: 11
Collections: The Terror Rarepair Week 2021





	Dear heart, it's me

James's last letter arrives scarcely a day before he does. An even shakier scrawl than usual: _Tired of govt trifles. Coming up Tuesday. O delightful anticipation!_ Anne has been snowed under by letters in the past few weeks, almost every day bringing a new note postmarked from Woolwich or the Admiralty. James is, perhaps, taking too great advantage of being back within the reach of a regular postal service, but Anne would never complain.

(One letter arrives with a poem comparing her eyes to the sky over the Thames. She reads it to Ellen, giddy, and suffers a day of merciless teasing in consequence.)

But there are more serious letters, too, as they settle the arrangements. The 18th of next month, at the little church near her aunt and uncle's. A holiday afterwards—somewhere on the seaside, as though James has not had more than his fill of the sea. And James writes to her father: a full-dress letter, but confident and even warm despite its careful formality.

"I suppose," her father says, every word chipped out of granite, "that the man has done well for himself." But he unbends enough to kiss her forehead and wish her happiness, and Anne feels a sorrow that has weighed her down for years lighten just a little.

True to his word, James arrives at Wadworth late Tuesday afternoon. He steps down from the carriage with a smile on his face, as thought he's only been gone a day, and bows and kisses her hand. As he straightens, Anne sees tears in his eyes to match her own, and it's all she can do not to fling her arms around his neck and kiss him within an inch of his life. She keeps his hand instead, winding their fingers together while James greets her aunt and uncle so charmingly that a blush rises in Aunt Judith's cheeks.

"Welcome home, dear heart," Anne murmurs, quietly enough that the others won't hear, and reads delight in his face.

* * *

James has changed. Indeed, after four hard years in the uncharted south, Anne had hardly expected otherwise. More lines on his face—lines of care, not just the smile lines that have always traced his eyes. And she'd felt a pang of worry, when he'd taken off his hat to reveal his wild dark hair gone grey as ash. He moves more carefully now, like weariness has taken root in his bones, and at supper she sees how his wine glass trembles in his hand.

But he's still her James.

* * *

After supper, they stroll through the gardens arm in arm, listening to the birds calling in the gathering dusk. Anne thinks of the times they've walked here before. Stolen moments in the summer before he'd sailed, James snatching a few brief days away from his preparations for the expedition. The memories of every one of their meetings are as well-worn and thumbed-through as her little store of letters, and even fewer in number. 

Another memory as they walk towards the pond, of when James had appeared up one spring morning with a trunk full of scientific apparatus and blithely told Uncle Robert that Wadworth was a spot of high magnetic interest. _One could almost call it a pole of attraction,_ he'd said later, as she fumbled with the dip circle outside the gardener's cottage, in the shadow of the willows. She'd laughed at him, then hissed with frustration as one of the grain weights slipped from her fingers. _You're doing very well, dear girl,_ James had said, reassuring; glancing up, she caught him looking at her with that particular gaze of his, like he saw her more clearly than anyone else could. The same ferocious focus that he aimed at his magnets, and would aim at the southern ice, she'd imagine. A little frightening.

(A little thrilling.)

A bright morning, and the scent of spring in the air, and her fingers brushing James's wrist perhaps a little too frequently to be entirely proper, not that he'd said a word in complaint. A perfect day.

But that was years ago, now. The cottage is empty, the grass around littered with fallen shingles, and Uncle Robert has had the willows cut back to give a better view of the pond. All the long, long years—she's waited half her life, it feels like. James isn't the only one who's changed. 

On the worst nights, when she'd woken from dreams of James drowned somewhere in the south, of a gap between letters that stretched longer and longer until she finally accepted that the next would never come, she'd tried to picture something like this. James steady and comforting by her side, one arm around her waist as they look up at the unfurling stars. Finally and forever each other's, with nothing to trouble them.

The setting sun throws cool shadows across the grass. James is quiet as they walk beneath the remaining willows. An easy silence at first, but as it stretches Anne begins to fret. It's not like James to be so taciturn. 

"You're very quiet," he says then, as though he's plucked the thoughts from her head.

"Just remembering when we were here last," Anne replies, squeezing his hand. "Thinking of how young we were."

"Ah," James says. Then, all in a rush, “Does it bother you?”

“Does what bother me?” she repeats, thinking of her usual anxieties: her father’s face when James’s letters arrive, all of Yorkshire talking of her, her aunt growing suspicious and turning her out of the house. James lets go of her arm, then turns aside a little, his face in shadow. He runs a hand through his hair, a gesture so familiar that for a moment she misses its meaning. 

Then she understands, and feels something catch in her throat, an ache of mingled affection and pain. “Oh, James,” she says. “How could you think so?”

“I’m a vain old man,” James says lightly, but there’s a bitter twist to his smile. 

“And a very stupid one,” Anne says, fierce, “if you think I’ll be scared off by grey hair.” She reaches up to run her fingers through his curls. His hair has grown longer, and it’s feathery-light under her hand. She tightens her fingers, feeling suddenly possessive, and James lets out a soft noise that’s somewhere between contentment and relief. 

“Was it very terrible, dearest?” she asks. She knows some of what he faced in the south, from the few of his letters that made their long way back to her. But she knows, too, that he’ll have wished to spare her the worst—dear foolish man, to think she’d ever flinch from sharing his troubles.

James closes his eyes as she strokes his hair. “Yes,” he says softly, and she sees the weariness in him again, just below the surface. “But that’s all over now.”

“Will you tell me about it?”

“Anything,” James says, and gives her the smile she remembers, still so beautiful it takes her breath away. “Though it’s rather a long yarn, I fear.”

“That’s no matter,” Anne says, and draws him into her arms. “We have time.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Fair" by The Amazing Devil.


End file.
